People Are Paying $400 To Spend New Year’s At The Olive Garden In Times Square

There are a lot of things I find really hard to understand about the world. One of them, as I discovered a few seconds ago, is the fact that people are spending $400 American dollars EACH to spend New Year’s at The Olive Garden in Times Square. For this price, attendees will get a “dinner buffet, multiple open bars, a DJ and dancing and a Champagne toast at midnight.” Breadsticks, apparently, are not included.

This is not a new thing, actually! Last year, the tickets were $350 and several people who went have said it was worth it. Attendee Jessica Parkin told the Huffington Post that “from the Olive Garden you couldn’t see the main stage or the ball drop, but around 11:40 p.m. we were taken through the back door to the Olive Garden and onto the streets in our own gated section where you could see the ball drop and be part of all the action. It was perfect.”

“Through the window you could see the crowds stood in the freezing cold and we felt extremely pleased that we were in the warmth!,” she said.

Several other locations are charging hefty price tags as well–Bubba Gump Shrimp is charging a whopping $799, Ruby Tuesday’s is charging $349 to $850 per person, and T.G.I. Fridays is charging $399.

I am not one of those people who makes fun of Olive Garden, because I think that’s pretty gross and classist. Still–it is even possible to have $349-$799 worth of a good time for one night at any of these places? I am not sure what would constitute $349-$799 worth of a good time for me, but I feel like it would have to involve at least one waterslide, and Idris Elba, Elvis Costello, Vincent D’Onofrio, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Feldman are all my dates. Oh, and I get to sing, and do a surprise duet with my guest and new best friend, Darlene Love. But even then, I feel like I would have a hard time having a good time because I would be constantly worried about having a good enough time to constitute having spent that much money.

Granted! These people probably think my New Year’s plans are less than exciting–I intend to spend the evening in the basement at my parents’ house in Rochester, NY, watching the Twilight Zone and trying to explain to strangers on Twitter why I think “Five Characters In Search of An Exit” is the worst episode ever. I don’t personally care a ton about New Year’s and consider it kind of a luxury to not do anything at all.

But hey–to each their own. If someone is going to have $400 worth of fun at an Olive Garden in Times Square, and it’s worth it to them, then I guess I’m not in too much of a position to judge. I guess we all just have different ideas about what $400 worth of fun looks like.